“Reversing”
“And you’re still addicted to way back when instead of
coming back to life.”
—Buddy Wakefield
there once was Boulder
and the flatirons draped in
summer sun.
I always had popsicles and
chapstick on hand,
a wet coral lipgloss,
tantrums and suggestive tones
that my brother would make it through,
funerals and weddings and cherry-
stacked Shirley Temples;
a lot of murmurs
from a painful
you declaring your love for me
in the middle of the night in
the middle of my hometown
while I was drunk on my former losses
and no cocktail to hold.
then there was despondent me
taking it all in
with a wilted corsage in my hair
that I wanted to wear the next day
but couldn’t wait
so bought it three days early and
never mind the water
my date called and
without twenty four hours notice,
stood me up.
you stood in.
we attended the wedding the next day;
on the anniversary of our trip across country.
I wore a peach vintage dress and tied a
ribbon in my hair instead of
the dehydrated orchid.
you brought me a headband and a bracelet to match,
said some dulcified things about my progress
and recovery, apologies about my brother
and you hoped my mom would be ok,
a little postcard that said “Ghent”
to remind where I came from
and a note on the back to remind me
where I’ve been.
to your credit,
I never said it,
(mostly self seeking back then)
we had it.
I never appreciated much
until I moved here and was
left in a townhouse on the
edge of Lehigh
and these days,
I appreciate just a little bit of sun
through the mirror of clouds that frowns back
and the retreat of all the workers and corners
to their shelters somewhere barely safe,
a brief meditation on my mattress,
enough money for dinner and
if I’m lucky, a nap
in the middle of the day where I lay
letting the thoughts of us
running to the west and unlocking fingers
to each discover it
in our own way
wash over me
to the sound of
forgive the sudden bird chirps
mostly silent days.
and we had it
so I know it happens.
“liberation”
as if I am even hurting anything;
some embittered tremulous
thing shaking her fist at the
moon and praying for a tidal
wave.
you notice the notch in my veins
before you even notice
the rain.
“flood”
one time I came to in my kitchen
holding a knife over my wrist and
a phone with an unsent text
to a girlfriend
asking for help,
telling her where I was at.
these things haunt you
when you do the dishes
sometimes.
“squall”
Dear xxx,
I hope you’re happy
soon.
“How to free yourself”
but to you there’s no difference between
decimation and the resolve so you’re
palms out begging for it
and here comes the reaper
wearing your blood.
you are God-drawn,
celibate,
obsessively
testing yourself and
wrapping lovers in
protection.
what white eyes you have
even in blackness,
even in malice you take
the time to care:
line their wrists in violet,
mugwort, alyssum.
crown them in tourmaline,
rose quartz and apophyllite.
it’s your gift we’re after
hear them clap.
become the madness for
them; deliver asylum and
I love you.
it is always me on the hearth
learning chants and you
tall, wickless and
unburned beside me
so I can’t see unless I
set myself on fire
and you remember the
bind you’re in.
what it’s all about.
I already said:
it’s the titles you should
be looking at.
“this unfolds reversing” or “in pyre”
at least I give you transparency.
even when I’m moping, I’m dancing
in songs of satin
rippling with sob and shimmering
deep bright with
the sky’s opacity.
I am combusting: a
flood of recourse and
you are
drowning, immersed
in capillaries bursting with crisis
and then immediate clarity.
my hands let go of the
flood I’m cradling.
you watch me move
like a snake across your
ceiling draped in shifting
constellations
you have no choice but to
memorize and I’m wearing
the crescent as a crown and
your ears like a gown
and someone else is full of warnings
gutting rabbits
in the garden.
each night I go to God and ask
for favor.
in the morning, I remember
one line.
I hand them back their most
prized possession:
a page, one line;
one at a time
wrapped in
flakes of
shrimp and you
told me you were
STARVING.
“aquarium”
- Big picture: I don’t belong anywhere.
- Small picture: Buy bed.
January 5, 2014 and we
have arrived in
North Philadelphia.
“hypothymia”
you can shake your fist at any
foaming coast but her
break remains unscathed,
her scorn in
waves,
her calm in
tides,
wet snarls pacified in
moon-swept stages
depending on the time of month,
the climate or the
stage.
you are barefoot:
some pedestrian gesture of
worship.
shrine.
avoiding the shells and
ghost crabs that litter the beach
at gloaming.
you’re wild and roaming
again seeking to slice wrists
with guilt and urgency,
pretension,
steal the scissors from his girlfriend’s
pocket.
what’s it like to be a hypnotist?
take a seat.
notice your veins rock,
glisten with munition.
life’s a seething blade
and you wear yours deep in your lungs.
the ways you have learned to assuage
are more permanent in placement
if you face it when you
say it.
write it on the page.
have them sing it with
vexation.
have them say it out loud and
curse themselves.
you watched your hands become tributes
to iniquity so you ask your feet
to become your fingers
now,
nothing from your mouth
going forward.
watch your toes curl in the sand
before you start wading.
you are practicing the dying art of
self-restraint.
you are practicing
prayer, overdo
amends.
you are seeking a quiet rest
inside of yourself.
you are seeking the
sudden wreck
that laid you.
1.
daturamoon.com 